This Virus Crud Is For The Birds

Friedman is just getting started: biting-giant, chip-on-his-shouldered, Emperor-Burton-in-a-doorway-Putin is also America’s “ex-boyfriend from hell,” who refuses to let us “date other countries, like China” (we want to date China?) because “he always measures his status in the world in relation to us.”

This passage made me stop, mentally dropping the images. Friedman seems to be saying Putin is in a perpetual dick-measuring contest with us, but is also our ex-boyfriend, which of course is more than possible (it’s 2022, folks), but did Friedman intend it that way? The guess is he wasn’t going for the wang imagery, in which case he probably wanted to stay away from the word “measure” in the context of a dude with an inferiority complex. On the other hand, the image of a scorned gay giant with micro-wiener dressed as Peter the Great and trapped in a doorway talking to his shoulder-boil is pretty dynamic stuff. I was going with it, heading into this passage:

If I were a cynic, I’d just tell him to go ahead and take Kyiv because it would become his Kabul, his Afghanistan — but the human costs would be intolerable. Short of that, I’d be very clear: If he wants to come down from the tree in which he’s lodged himself, he’s going to have to jump or build his own ladder. He has completely contrived this crisis, so there should be no give on our part. China is watching — and Taiwan is sweating — everything we do in reaction to Vlad right now. Which brings us back to the central question: Vlad, why are you in that tree?

Not many writers would have the guts to spend multiple opening paragraphs constructing an elaborate image of a giant insecure biting ex-boyfriend who wants to date China, then suddenly introduce the idea that this creature is also stuck in a tree. Worse, Friedman tells him that if he wants to get down, he’s either going to have to jump or “build his own ladder.”